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bonch writes "European antitrust regulators are set to issue a 400-page statement of objections accusing Google of 'abuse of dominance' next month, the result of an investigation launched last year after complaints from rivals that Google manipulated ad pricing and barred advertisers from running ads on rival sites. If found guilty, Google could be fined up to 10% of its annual turnover, which is about $3 billion. Microsoft avoided a similar fine when it settled its European antitrust case and included a 'browser ballot' in Windows."

They're using their huge market share to unfairly promote their other products left and right. They have the most dominant position to do this too - the largest search engine on planet. They can put out anyone they want out of business. For years they have scraped smaller websites and then returning their own sites higher in search engine results. They push Google+ to every that comes to Google. How is Diaspore or other smaller social networks ever going to challenge that? They push Chrome to every IE user in a very spammy way, and they always do it in YouTube too. Recently all the flight ticket search engines started fearing as Google introduced their own one and embedded the results directly in search results.

Now with Google+, they're tieing all their products together too. YouTube just got a much more "social" and google+'ish look, and in one of their recent videos they show how search results, maps, calendar, news, music, video and every other Google service will integrate with Google+. Because of their market share that is blatant monopoly abuse and I'm good to see that EU is finally doing something about it. US is still investigating Google, but with Google having bought so many politicans in Washington and friends in NSA and FBI I'd be more surprised to see if they did something.

The very things you are worried about are Google's death knell, they are busy dividing and conquering their own workforce and focus, exactly the way previous giants, like Nokia did, so don't worry about it, it's a natural part of executive narcissism. Someone will come along (out of nowhere it'll seem) in a short while and make billions knocking Google off their pedestal into a has-been like Microsoft.

Microsoft is far from a has-been. They still dominate in desktop operating systems, and in all office software for business use. Not doing badly in servers too. Just because their efforts to expand into HPC and embedded have failed dismally doesn't make them a has-been.

Then you need a core cash cow which you can sell to people again and again and again and again. At some point, people wise up and move on but until that happens you'll make money. What you have to be careful of is not losing too much on the rest of your failures while the cow is still producing.

You mean just like car companies are on verge of dying because someday people could just stop buying new cars and keep using their old ones?

If you also didn't notice, Microsoft has very stable other products too and they tend to take a long term goal with them. Most people tend to bitch how companies don't think long term but just want quick cash. Well, not Microsoft. And at 32% market share in the US, I would say Bing is a really successful product. They're also getting really valuable user and keyword d

And at 32% market share in the US, I would say Bing is a really successful product

Bing is losing more than a billion a quarter. Highly successful, if it was a government project.

Which just shows how committed Microsoft is to think long-term and keep that market share. And do you honestly want Microsoft to pull out? That leaves no other search provider in the US. Google will be only one you can go to.

I think that it is safe to say, if Google went out of business tomorrow, I could still search the intartubez, without relying on Microsoft. I can avoid Bing, MSN search, Yahoo, and anything else that is in "partnership" with Microsoft. All those search engines work in the USA. I suspect that they all work anywhere in the world. I haven't even done much of a search for oth

Nope. I most definitely do not use Microsoft products by mistake. I run a Linux desktop, and I choose Google for my searches. I suppose that I use Microsoft servers while using the web. Some people can't set up a server on their own, so they get Microsoft to do it for them.

Personally i'm damned sick and tired of seeing everyone that doesn't go along with the herd and drink the koolaid like a good little drone being labeled a shill. Name a SINGLE thing that guy posted that wasn't true. if MSFT pulls out of search will there be anyone left to compete? nope as yahoo closed their search division nearly two years ago and are concentrating on their web portal and email which i can't say as i blame them as that is their two biggest products by far.

Lets look at his other statements shall we? does MSFT think long term? Well you can easily know to the DAY how long their products are gonna last, they put up handy little EOL roadmaps which makes it easy to plan a business around. For example XP is EOL in Apr 2014 and Windows 7 is 2020, no just killing products willy nilly here like Google.

Now lets look at yours and the others shall we? "The desktop is a has been" likely written from an iPad. Despite the coming of iJesus computers still sell REALLY well and frankly as a retailer I can tell you the ONLY reason PCs have slowed down is simply because they have reached maturity and are long past "good enough" for the masses. There is frankly nothing the average person does in home or office that doesn't run really well on even a 5 year old dual core, so why should they buy when they don't need to? Pads are a niche product, for Apple its a high dollar niche but its still a niche.

And then of course there is you labeling anyone who doesn't think like you a shill. honestly i have more respect for the trolls that call everyone nigger as they have less of a bad attitude than you do and are more honest. With your type of troll all must think like you or they are one of THEM, just insert the company you don't like into the THEM and lather rinse repeat. One week its Apple, the next MSFT, the one after that Oracle, all except whatever company is "your" company like its a God damned ball club.

So if you don't agree with his opinion while don't you actually do something constructive like make a well thought out argument for your position? Oh right that would mean actually having to think and compare instead of mindlessly following with the herd. I hate to say it but i'm gonna have to agree with old Mikey 400+ accounts that "Slashdot = stagnated'.

Now please waste your mod points for my blasphemy of pointing out mindless constant accusations instead of counter arguments is stupid and pointless, especially in a place that is SUPPOSED to be full of smart tech guys, not mindless fanbois.

You want a single thing that wasn't true? I have a nice long post that points out exactly where Mr "I-have-a-proper-first-post-within-seconds-of-the-story-without-being-a-subscriber" flat-out makes up shit about Google: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2556346&cid=38249028 [slashdot.org]. And then he turns around and the exact things that are bad about Google are suddenly good about Microsoft.

As for your comment about XP roadmaps: tell me how many people are using XP and what they paid for it, and I'll show you a G

That's record revenue not earnings. They've earned this much per share last year as well (so 12% increase in revenue with no corresponding increase in income per share? Meh). I notice their stock price is still lower than it was in 2001.

The current generation of phones are just about powerful enough to replace the desktop. The next generation will do it. Think a couple of years for market penetration.

Your desktop will be at most a docking station to connect larger displays, better I/O and peripherals to your phone. Why do you think Microsoft paid Nokia to use their mobile OS? Because they know the desktop is irrelevant and they have to get into the phone market as their core income dwindles.

When a phone comes equipped with a quad core Opteron, and the graphics to drive any game that runs on Windows at hundreds of FPS, then I'll be interested. Call me a pessimist, but I don't see any phone rivaling the desktop for raw power in the next 10 years.

Go ahead, surprise me. Get someone to produce a smart phone for a thousand dollars or less that can outperform my desktop in all respects, and I'll buy one.

There is also the fact that if the phone could do that, there is no reason that Windows couldn't run on it. Even if that meant MS had to port it to another processor. If a phone could replace a desktop and sat on the desk with a monitor and keyboard, it would be a desktop. Just as if my desktop were shrunk down, a battery put in it, it had a touch interface and cellular modem, it would be a smart phone. The difference between a smartphone and a Desktop PC is a line drawn in shade a of gray. Much like a

I can design a desktop computer on my desktop computer - it runs CAD, FEA, compilers and the like. Does my phone have the horsepower and ability and user interface (like an efficient keyboard and input device) to allow me to design a phone on it?

right, I'll poiint you to 99% of industral parts vendors that do not have selection software for my phone (HTC blahblahblah running CM7). Also have you ever tried to do anything in cad on a 4 inch screen? heck my 23" 1900x1050 dual screens at work are too small.

I'll give you that generally for home use that the phone + tablet will work, but good luck if you want to create and maintain a list of addresses and print them out on envelopes every Christmas (my grandmother is doing that). Want to edit that video

... Or just stick your portable device in a Thunderbolt-based dock station with powerful GPU on board connected to 23" monitor and an HDD.

Then you'll just need to solve the problem with people walking out with confidential information, overpricing (a desktop with computing power on par with $600 phone costs about $200-300 now) and, overarching these two, people accidentally dropping their phones.

Once you have CHOSEN to go to the Google webspace then yes, you will see the whole Google portfolio; nothing wrong with that, you would not expect to see Macy's products advertised on Sears would you?

bing - four charactersgoogle - six characters

People take extra effort to use google; they actively select it. If you install windows and select the default/first option everywhere you end up with bing/MS on everything. and yet: PEOPLE ACTIVELY CHOOSE GOOGLE..

They do need controlling on their advertising dominance but to claim they abuse their search position is nonsensical. (or, given the speed and pre-written nature of your response, shows that it is a claim mostly made by the paid-for muppets of their rivals.)

Every monopoly abuse still needs that choosing. No one has anyone ever physically forced you to use their services. Yet, companies are fined for monopoly abuses and it's against the law. EVEN IF PEOPLE ACTIVELY CHOOSE THEM TOO, like you shouted. It's still wrong to abuse your monopoly status even if people choose to use your services, that's the whole point of it.

Generally speaking, prosecuted monopolies tend to make it unreasonable to make an alternative choice. For example, it is still quite difficult to buy a new desktop computer that has a non-Windows operating system installed, and it was even more difficult back when MS was under antitrust investigations. In addition to that, it was at the time very difficult to NOT have IE installed on said computer. IIRC, they even used their position in the desktop OS market to ensure that Netscape was not installed on c

But what matters here is that Google is actively working to destroy competition, by forbidding their advertisers from using the same ads in competing advertising places. This leaves worse revenue stream for competing services, and no finances to compete against Google. Bing is only capable of it because Microsoft can back it from separate revenue sources, and yet Google is still actively trying to prevent advertisers from moving to their services. Other companies just don't have any change. That is pure abu

But what matters here is that Google is actively working to destroy competition.

Welcome to a capitalist economy; this is what companies do..

As I noted elsewhere here, there probably is (from what I have seen) a case to answer in the advertising sphere..

But search. No. And it's not just Bing of course, there is Baidu, Ask, Yahoo, even Watson. and many more.. As a search consumer I feel fully empowered and actively use multiple products from multiple companies.

For example, it is still quite difficult to buy a new desktop computer that has a non-Windows operating system installed

In my country, which is in Eastern Europe, nearly half of all PC and laptops sold come without Windows. They either have Ubuntu or FreeDOS installed, and they cost about $50-$100 less. This is done because a price difference of $100 means a lot to people here. Of course, people buying a Core i7 laptop running FreeDOS intend to pirate Windows, but it's perfectly legitimate for vendors to sell the laptops, because they're not the ones doing the pirating.

Please. They choose Google because no matter what they choose, it's automatically Google. They type in the search bar, it goes to Google. They type in the address bar, it goes to Google without even telling them. They click the magnifying glass on their phone, it goes to google. They search on their game system, it goes to Google. I realize there are some phones and web browsers that don't use Google. But in general, people choose Google because it's the only thing they see.

Please. They choose Bing because no matter what they choose, it's automatically Bing. They type in the search bar, it goes to Bing. They type in the address bar, it goes to Bing without even telling them. They click the magnifying glass on their phone, it goes to Bing. They search on their game system, it goes to Bing. I realize there are some phones and web browsers that don't use Bing. But in general, people choose Bing because it's the only thing they see.

You could say the same for the Microsoft monopoly. After all, you have to choose MS Windows before you'd get the default IE browser. And before you say Windows is installed by default on the computer and users didn't "choose" it, keep in mind that Apple had always been happy to sell you a Mac -- the user did choose the Wintel platform.

you would not expect to see Macy's products advertised on Sears would you?

If Sears became a monopoly, and used its position to block competitors of its own products, then I suspect there'd be a problem too.

No, you really can't. People don't choose Microsoft because they like it, they choose Microsoft because they don't have a choice. It is necessary to run third party software, which has nothing to do with the quality or price of the actual Microsoft product. And by and large it comes on your new PC whether you want it or not.

Compare this to search engines: They all cost the same (free), and there is no switching cost because there is no third party software (you don't have to buy a different web browser and

You're attempting to fold all of the market barriers to entry into the definition of quality, so that any barrier to entry (like third party application support) is written off as a good quality of the monopolist's product. Which is totally useless when the point to distinguish between barriers to entry and meritorious competition on the basis of price and quality.

Nope; I really cant.. Having brought and tried my first windows machine 20 years ago It was crap; but the cost to me of changing it for a mac would have been many hundreds of dollars and a fair amount of physical effort and re-learning stuff.

The cost to me of switching web search providers is trivial; in fact a good argument can be made that people generally start with a competitor and actively switch to Google to get a better product. And equally importa

"If Sears became a monopoly, and used its position to block competitors of its own products, then I suspect there'd be a problem too."

Care to elaborate; care to explain how Sears will stop you shopping at Macy's?

The mechanisms I can see would be by buying the land and closing the stores (or closing the road to the stores, or screwing with their supply chain, or attacking them economically/legally). All of which would scream 'red flag' and be very actionable.

Google is one company, and can distribute it's finances any way it wishes to within the company.. Just as I distribute my personal finances as I see fit.. An so long as I meet my basic obligations (tax, fishfood, I have no debts;-) ) I can use, for instance, money I earn working as a web admin to support my private websites etc..

If using profits from one branch of a business to promote another is 'unfair' then every company that's ever expanded has done so 'unfairly'

Yet the barriers to switch away from google for the end user are essentially zero, so there really is no monopoly power to abuse. If end users find google searches limited in scope to google's products and thus is not what they are looking for, they can switch away to yahoo, bing or whatever website they want. Google even makes it easier for you to change default search engines in its browser, than the browser of its competitor, microsoft, does. Don't forget that in the market of finding information, it's not only search engines that do this anymore. Facebook is driving a lot of traffic to sites just as google is. It is also offering its own ad system.

Simply promoting Google+, or Chrome is in no way abuse of monopoly power. Scraping is not what Google is doing. it is indexing sites, fully complying to robots.txt, and offering information to its users and therefore traffic to these sites in a manner it sees is more useful to its users. Let's face it, when you search for "New York", you more likely than not want to see a map and maybe stuff you can do there (links below that open up relevant searches). Calling this unfair advantage and calling for action on it, would in essence not let google users find what they really intended to find and thus render google less useful to them.

Ultimately you have to ask yourself is: What is the harm being done to consumers? If you ask me, the people complaining that Google abuses its position, don't really have a compelling answer to that, other than "please protect our interests".

But the a huge abuse in this case is also that Google forbid advertisers on Google running the same ads on other networks. That is pure monopoly abuse.

You want to provide a link for where you got this? Because it sure sounds like you're just parroting the line from the CNET article linked in the summary ("Those obligations bar advertisers from using the same ads they run on Google on their own sites or competing search engines such as Bing and Yahoo.") But the whole CNET article is just rewording the Financial Times article it links, and it looks like the game of telephone has produced a transcription error, because the FT instead has: "Google is also sai

They're using their huge market share to unfairly promote their other products left and right.

You mean, like every business on earth, they use their existing mind share to promote their other products. Unless you actually want to fine Boeing for advertising their regional jets when they're selling their intercontinental jets, you're full of hot air.

They have the most dominant position to do this too - the largest search engine on planet.

Only if you define the planet by Europe and US. Russia isn't so enamored with Google, and China... well, we know about China. You can, of course, always weasel out by arguing that they are still the largest engine on the planet by total users, but now you're just mixing arguments. I'm pretty sure that's not an accident, too.

For years they have scraped smaller websites and then returning their own sites higher in search engine results.

They push Google+ to every that comes to Google.

Yes? Should they hide the fact that they have another product available?

How is Diaspore or other smaller social networks ever going to challenge that?

By being better? Or, to turn the argument around - the same way that Google ate Altavista's lunch.

They push Chrome to every IE user in a very spammy way, and they always do it in YouTube too.

Another outright fucking lie. Unless you think that telling people that they should upgrade from IE 6 is a terrible sin. In which case, you're just delusional.

Recently all the flight ticket search engines started fearing as Google introduced their own one and embedded the results directly in search results.

Because of their market share that is blatant monopoly abuse and I'm good to see that EU is finally doing something about it.

Newsflash: having a large market share is not a monopoly. Furthermore, having a monopoly is not in and of itself illegal. What is illegal is to turn a non-government sanctioned monopoly into a rent-seeking enterprise by limiting external competition.

Now, how exactly is Google limiting competition? People are a click away from Bing. A click away from Facebook. None of the data that Google holds is sticky. There is exactly zero cost to switching to a competitor like Bing. Why aren't people doing it? Tell me, why? Because.... they're Google? That's a circular argument.

Tell you what, I'll make you a deal. You start posting the same crap in Facebook and Microsoft stories, and I'll pretend that you actually believe what you're posting.

--"They push Chrome to every IE user in a very spammy way, and they always do it in YouTube too."

-"Another outright fucking lie. Unless you think that telling people that they should upgrade from IE 6 is a terrible sin. In which case, you're just delusional."

have you actually booted up ie lately? I had a win 7 installation in summer(work laptop) and used ie(version that shipped with it) and bing just for keeping up to date on them. the chrome adverts google served up for it were downright spammy and in your

I have. Same reason as you - I have a work laptop with Win7 that has IE8 for troubleshooting purposes. Just for kicks, I clicked around google.com, did some searches, clicked around Youtube, watched some videos. Not a single Chrome ad. Not even a link to Chrome in anydiscernible fashion. You're gonna have to do better than just claiming that, because I just don't see it.

advertising is a different thing though. forcing exclusivity deals to stop advertisers from advertising on other search engines makes other search engines business harder.

If that is true, they deserve to be slapped down for that. I'm still waiting for some sort of proof, other than someone just claiming that

Everyone is using their huge market share to promote their products left and right. It takes a long time for laws and legal authorities to catch up to developments in technology, and by that time these monopolies are so big that they can painlessly absorb any fines and have bottomless cash reserves for a legal fight.

Google is doing that, but it is important to note that Google is no different in this respect from any other major company. It offers the only way anyone will ever compete with Facebook, and the

You're confusing a couple of very different issues here. Google does NOT have a monopoly on search and the EU isn't claiming they do. By the very definition if useful alternatives exist then there's not a monopoly. Naturally they push their other services to existing users. Every company does this. Every company that has some common sense and is likely to be in business next financial year anyway. The key thing that differentiates this from normal practice and abuse of power is if the users have choice or not.

For all users there is a choice. I.e. is shipped out of the box with Bing as the default search engine. When you first start Chrome it asks you what your default search engine is. When you go to Google's home page you get a single bar at the top of the page, that's it. Users can all avoid this (and given the latest search numbers quite a few of them do) and thus it is not an abuse of market share.

What Google does have a monopoly in is advertising. They have the single biggest presence for advertising on the internet with facebook a very distant second, and unlike the general user visiting a search engine there's not the same amount of choice out there for advertisers given that Google's monopoly stretches way beyond the search arena and onto websites of partners around the world.

And whom is compelling those who wish to advertise to use Google? There are other other ad services available which provide the same function. There still do exist newspapers, tv, radio and billboards. This table [plunkettresearch.com] may help you out

And whom is compelling those who wish to advertise to use Google? There are other other ad services available which provide the same function.

I dont think you know what "function" means in this context. If you want a million eyes on your advertisement today, you have to go with Google, and thus you cannot go with anyone else because Google forbids it.

OMFG!!! Those bastards!! They are using legitimate business practises to compete fairly, and they are winning over European companies that offer an inferior service!!

From the article "Foundem vs Google: a case study in SEO fail"

I read the article on the tube, so wasn’t immediately able to check the website in question, but normally when firms blame Google for their problems it is related entirely to their web strategy (or lack of it), as opposed to some outlandish flaw with Google's algorithm. As such I reckoned there would be a problem with the Foundem website, and probably relating to unique content, technology, and a lack of quality links.

In any case, this clearly just another Microsoft scam. From the article:

The probe was prompted by complaints from several rivals including Foundem, eJustice, and Microsoft-owned Ciao, which claimed that Google had unfairly manipulated search results by lowering the rankings of competing services and elevating its own offerings in unpaid results.

Typical, MS using "Tonya Harding" tactics to break the knee-caps of MS competitors.

They're using their huge market share to unfairly promote their other products left and right.

Do you always talk gibberish or are you trying something new today? Google can promote all they want, there are no laws against promotion. If Google forced you to use Chrome to access their sites, then we would have a problem but there not so let's move on.

They have the most dominant position to do this too - the largest search engine on planet.

Good for them. They did it fair and square.

They can put out anyone they want out of business.

So can anyone else. As long as the competition laws are followed.

For years they have scraped smaller websites and then returning their own sites higher in search engine results.

If you hate Google's products so much, why do you insist on continuing to type google.com into your browser and going there?You forcing the problem on yourself is the only way for your statements to be true.

If you don't want to be there, STOP going there.

The only thing more funny than Nelson taking a kids fist and using it to punch said kid in face, saying "Stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!" -- Is people like you, who stand alone in a field punching yourself all on your own accord, and then co

And exactly what is wrong with promoting your other products? Think about wtf you just said. So if you start a company and it provides a product or service which does incredibly well, so well that it is the defacto choice, then you should not market your other products to your customers? You are not forced to buy them. You are not even forced to buy or use the original product.

And given that for the end user that a) Google searches are free (as are youtube, gmail, etc) and b) there are many competitors (Fac

Personally i'm damned sick of google shoving chrome down everyone's throats thanks to having it spammed in every piece of freeware on the planet. First it was the damned toolbar now its Chrome. seriously WTF Google? you have the biggest fricking search engine on the planet AND the most popular video site AND one of the biggest mobile OSes AND a very popular email client. that isn't enough damned ways to shill chrome for you? you gotta act like God damned Bonzi Buddy too? WTF?

As an Italian patriot I welcome fining corporations. I'm sure I speak for many of us when I say "We see this as a minor yet convenient contribution to our nation al debt. Even single digit billions are not to be shunned. And some of it will eventually land in Italian pockets." There must be a way to make it stick and I'm sure we can make the form or shape we find look beautiful, trust me.

Personally I see a dodgy edge on Google but compared to M$ they are saints and I'd be absolutely terrified if Apple were in a similar position. Oh, and "Italian patriot" is a bit of an oxymoron.

This is sort of off-topic since TFA is about Google's monopoly power (in Europe), and Google is after all legally enjoying its Dutch Sandwich, but I'm also in favor of the EU keeping more of Google's free lunch to pay EU debts.

Urban Dictionary describes a Dutch Sandwich as follows:

A legal tax dodge also called the Double Irish. Profits are sent to Ireland which has a high tax rate. But, Ireland doesn't tax some payments made to other EU states, so the money is sent to a shell in the Netherlands. The Dutch h

A while ago a friend of mine, working at myvideo.de, complained, that google kept ads prices too low to pressure competition. Considering youtube was losing money, no one would argue that they weren't too low.

I can't directly relate it to search monopoly, though, since technically Apple or Samsung could buy youtube and play the same "oh youtube isn't profitable" while competitors go bancrupt, but it does feel like abuse.

The probe was prompted by complaints from several rivals including Foundem, eJustice, and Microsoft-owned Ciao, which claimed that Google had unfairly manipulated search results by lowering the rankings of competing services and elevating its own offerings in unpaid results.

This is largely based on the misgivings of European publishers and European IT companies who missed the boat entirely. For years, they have enjoyed near-monopolies themselves, often aided by subsidies and government-imposed fees and price fixing. Now Google has been eating their lunch with cheaper offerings on books, music, video, news, and they are recognizing that they are becoming irrelevant.

This is only one of many attacks they have attempted; they are throwing out shit left and right and see what sticks. A few years ago, they conned the French and German governments into wasting hundreds of millions of Euros on a "Google killer". They have tried pushing legislation that would give European news publishers copyright over the facts contained in news stories. They have tried to set up complicated rules that make digital publishing costly and cumbersome. They have ensured that they get their cut even for books and content they didn't create. They created an anti-Streetview hysteria. Etc.

If they succeed, the people who will suffer will be the Europeans themselves, who will continue to be subject to price fixing and control of their culture and media by a few European media outlets.

Oh yes EU is soooo biased against US companies that the biggest fine they've handed out so far was to a European company and the majority of fines they are handing out still goes to european countries...

But yes pulling out of europe is certainly a valid option, the only options they do have is to either obey local law OR pull out of Europe.
Or are you trying to suggest that US companies should be above the law?

When you do not obey another country's laws, why should they allow you to do business there?

The fact is, US companies want to do business abroad, and this means they've implicitly agreed to following the laws of the countries they're doing business in.

Unless you're a major shareholder of any company, you can cry all you want about having to follow whatever unjust laws you perceive, but the reality is that shareholders want money instead of the ideological zealotry that you're so fond of.

Oh yes, like fining Google for a few 100 million will solve our crisis. Get real. Unlike in the US, corruption is illegal in Europe, and so misusing monopolies is punished like it should be. And companies are obliged to operate by the prevailing laws. That Google is an American company has nothing to do with it. A few months ago a cartel of European manufacturers of elevators was fined almost one billion euros, but since elevators are not as 'visible' as Google you don't know about that.

That corruption is illegal in Europe doesn't mean it doesn't occur. I never said it doesn't. You just don't like to hear the truth. Look at your politicians. They all are owned by the companies who paid loads of money to get them their positions. If that is not legalized corruption I don't know what is.

He didn't say that American politics wasn't corrupt. He didn't even say that American politics was less corrupt than European politics. The argument he made seems to be that European politics is all kinds of corrupt, which would put the not liking to hear the truth as YOUR flaw.

What Greece and Itily do is NOT European politics. But I don't blame you for not knowing how European politics works; even Europe's politicians seem to not know how it works. And we're in this big political crisis in which European politics is in the process of being reformed too. These are difficult times.

What Greece and Itily do is NOT European politics. But I don't blame you for not knowing how European politics works; even Europe's politicians seem to not know how it works. And we're in this big political crisis in which European politics is in the process of being reformed too. These are difficult times.

I guess Austria, Britain, France also do not constitute European politics either? It would seem that the EU is no more free of corruption and business influence than the US.

Corruption is a universal problem wherever there is money to be made. I would venture to say the US and the EU probably do more to plush it than many countries but neither are pure and virginal either.

Technically speaking, it would seem to be European politics. It is politics, and it is in Europe. The corruption issues may be limited to the national level, so it wouldn't be corruption at the EU level. That said, I'm sure that corruption is quite prevalent at the EU level as well. As I've already said, pretending that it isn't makes you the blind one.

But then again, European politics haven't come up with atrocities like software patents, SOPA and the DMCA either. In other words, I have proof for my claim and you don't have proof for yours. I think the institution of laws like the DMCA and SOPA (which hopefully doesn't happen), which have absolutely nothing to do with liberty and frredom for all but big corporations, is a sign of a level of corruption that even the Nigerian 'government' (which is basically Shell) can only look at in envy.

It's worth remembering that a major component of how the DMCA came to be was saying that the US had to comply with WIPO provisions. Also, a major justification for the CTEA was also to 'harmonize' with European law, and said attempt at 'harmonization' was a large component for why the majority of SCOTUS erred in not striking down the retroactive extensions. Also, for most of the 20th century, US copyright law was much weaker than European law, and there are still some areas where it is more permissive. T

You're right, let's stop. It was fun while it lasted but it gets no-one anywhere. But I don't know if you hate your government more than I hate mine, the Dutch government;). I guess it's normal to find your government one of the worst in the world. Anyway, Europe and America are still two of the best places to live in on this planet, so we don't have it really bad.

Oh yes, like fining Google for a few 100 million will solve our crisis. Get real. Unlike in the US, corruption is illegal in Europe, and so misusing monopolies is punished like it should be. And companies are obliged to operate by the prevailing laws. That Google is an American company has nothing to do with it. A few months ago a cartel of European manufacturers of elevators was fined almost one billion euros, but since elevators are not as 'visible' as Google you don't know about that.

PAre your referring to the 2007 action? If so, a few months ago the EU cut one of the major European company's fine by 33%.

No, the US isn't. However, the US isn't facing a lack of lenders (like Greece & Co are), nor does the US make a habit of singling out successful foreign businesses to charge massive bullshit fines. Though, the real problem is corporate greed - if companies stood up en mass and told places like the EU to go fuck themselves and pulled out, the citizens of those countries would force through a governmental change real quick when they had to start living without things like video games, Android / iOS / Bl

Hey, EU. You're doing something wrong if you face huge budget shortfalls if you don't get your annual big business fine every year. Fining prosperous companies should not be a major source of income for ANY government.

That's actually funny; the US wouldn't be in such trouble if it didn't have this idea that you can't apply laws to business. The 2008 crash was completely unnecessary, but of course whatever happens now is EU's fault. Btw since you still haven't figured out it's not one big country here's the short and sweet of it: Euro-zone != EU and EU != Europe.

look around you. its not the us anymore that's in trouble now. its the eu. the us has mostly recovered, because they have people willing to work, not just find new ways to fine smart people.

If by mostly recovered you mean the fact that no one is talking about the US, then sure, you're as recovered as most of the EU was a while back; slight growth with hopes for better. Last I heard there were talks of the US maybe losing it's triple A status as it was going nowhere fast with balancing the budget.

I read the article on the tube, so wasn’t immediately able to check the website in question, but normally when firms blame Google for their problems it is related entirely to their web strategy (or lack of it), as opposed to some outlandish flaw with Google's algorithm. As such I reckoned there would be a problem with the Foundem website, and probably relating to unique content, technology, and a lack of quality links.